World Without End
Four astronauts returning from man's first mission to Mars enter a time warp and crash on a 26th Century Earth devastated by atomic war. At first unaware where they are, but finding the atmosphere safe to breathe, they start exploring and find themselves in a divided future where disfigured mutants living like cavemen inhabit the surface, while the normals live comfortably below the surface but are dying as a race from lack of natural water, air and sunlight.
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- Cast：
- Hugh Marlowe , Nancy Gates , Rod Taylor , Lisa Montell , Nelson Leigh , Christopher Dark , Everett Glass
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Reviews
Good concept, poorly executed.
A waste of 90 minutes of my life
I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.
A story that's too fascinating to pass by...
Just watched one of my childhood favorites; a film that remains on my personal Top 100 List to this day, the great sci-fi film "World Without End" (1956). I have seen this film countless times and never seem to tire of it. This is the one in which four astronauts, returning home to Earth from an orbit of Mars, crash through the time barrier and wind up on the Earth of 2508. The Earth is a radioactive wasteland, with the only remnants of civilization living underground, and mutant cavemen preying aboveground. The film is kind of a flip of H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine," in which the mutants lived underground and the more normal folk lived under the sun. In "World Without End," two of the astronauts are played by Hugh Marlowe and Rod Taylor, the latter of whom would go on to star in the film version of "The Time Machine" four years later, of course. The film features a great use of CinemaScope and color, and the print that I watched last night, courtesy of TCM, was just about the best-looking that I've ever seen...and I've seen the film on the big screen, as well. It's hard to believe that as a kid, I used to content myself with watching this movie on a B&W set, with a squeezed-up, compressed image, and still be thrilled by it. And even today, the movie manages to thrill, especially the scenes in which our heroes blast those mutant cavemen out of the cliff rocks with a homemade bazooka, and when Hugh Marlowe engages in hand-to-hand combat with Naga, the one-eyed leader of the mutants. Wonderful stuff for a kid, and just as wonderful for adults. Nancy Gates is on hand as the daughter of the underground leader, and she is just one of many long-legged, miniskirted babes to be found in this picture (costumes courtesy of future "Playboy" artist Alberto Vargas!). This film was directed by the great Edward Bernds, who had previously directed so many Three Stooges shorts and would go on to direct yet another sci-fi cult classic of the '50s, "Queen of Outer Space," with which "World Without End" shares some common elements (that humongous, phony-looking spider, for one thing!). In all, pure entertainment!
Some guys on a space voyage get caught in a time warp and go into the future, five hundred years or so. Like it is in "The Time Machine," our future is populated underground with weak-kneed pacifists and a race of cave men have evolved on the surface. Leave it to our Tweintieth Century guys to bring back war as the only solution. It is a sexist society where the women run around in outfits like 1970's cocktail waitresses. They are quite attractive and the indigenous men are certainly lacking. The rocket men want to help out by building barriers, introducing weaponry, and hence protecting the people that don't want their help. It is reasonably entertaining but the acting is stiff, the interactions unbelievable and short sighted, and the message simplistic. There is certainly a grasp of true science missing here.
A returning spaceship crew of four astronauts(including Rod Taylor & Hugh Marlowe) find themselves sent through a time-warp into the 26th century, where an atomic war has taken place, resulting in a primitive tribe of men on the surface, and a society of intelligent(but tyrannical) people living below. The astronauts discover that they likely can't get home again, and so must sort out this world if they have any hope of surviving(and dodge the odd giant spider!). Good cast, but silly film with a pulp-minded story and clichés. Still, it is interesting to note how this may have influenced "The Time Machine", "Planet Of The Apes", and even "Star Trek"! (Though they greatly improved on these ideas, and made them more imaginative.)
This must be the dumbest 1950's sci-fi movie ever.It starts of fine, (like an early version of Planet of the Apes)only instead of apes we get a race of "mutates" on the surface of the earth and a small group of "regular humans" who have built a society underground(A lot of similarities with the Timemachine).Our 4 heroes end up in a cave and are taken in by the regular humans,finding out that after a big nuclear war the surface dwellers were mutated into hideous,violent,Cycloptic Neanderthal-like "mutates" due to radiation,and a group of humans went underground.These underground dwellers degenerated into spineless peace loving hippie treehuggers with no stomach for violence whatsoever (which seems logical considering the earth was decimated by nuclear war) Our 4 heroes however disagree with this peaceful society and take it upon themselves to lead the treehuggers back to the surface where humans belong,and propose to create weapons to take the surface back,because the underground society will go extinct due to the oh so obvious inbreeding.Now i am not sure about the morale of this tale but i'm sure American 2nd amendment lovers should adopt this movie.
